Doctor Druid may be a student of the mystic arts, but that doesn’t mean that he walks a righteous path. This week on Marvel 101, follow the descent of Doctor Druid through life, death, and the afterlife.

Unleash the Beasts: Hypno-Creature

A two-dimensional reality gives way to a horrible menace!

by TJ Dietsch

With so many classic creatures on the loose in Monsters Unleashed, we turn to their earlier adventures thanks to Marvel Unlimited.

Stumbling into a strange, subterranean and possibly alien environment would be a lot for anyone to handle. John Cummings dealt with it in relative stride in the pages of a 1961 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby story in TALES OF SUSPENSE #23.

In his younger days, the man recounted his generally curious nature. He’d ask anyone about anything they worked on, including some men digging a hole in the street. When they brushed him off, John got even more curious and watched them from a building.

To his surprise, one of the men disappeared before his eyes. Compelled to find out what happened, John climbed down into the hole himself and soon found himself disappearing.

Molecularly transported somewhere else, John’s body now existed in two dimensions instead of the usual three. Unperturbed by his flattened form, the intrepid young man kept looking around and soon discovered that he’d stumbled upon a 2D city hidden underground.

Johnny soon learned that the workmen from above were actually disguised 2D beings and that they planned on invading the 3D world. An alarm sounded alerting the flat folks that someone had bad thoughts, sending John running. That’s when they unleashed the Hypno-Creature.

Originally hand-held, the Hypno-Creature grew to monstrous sizes after the tube around its neck was broken and it breathed in certain fumes. Moments later, it took off after John into the Valley of Crystal.

Seemingly trapped and about to fall prey to the beast’s blast, John grabbed a nearby crystal and reflected the Hypno-Blast back at his pursuer. The youth ordered the Hypno-Creature to attack his masters, regained his extra dimension, scrambled back to the surface, commandeered a steamroller. and closed up the hole crushing the trans-dimensional machine in the process.

After he had taken care of business, a cop came over and told Cummings that he’d probably get sued by the company that dug the hole in the first place, but John just smiled knowing that it wouldn’t really be a problem.